![[Bytes Link logo]](../../../cgif/bytelnk2.gif)
Adobe PageMaker 6.5 Plus
by Brent Mockbee, TCS Member Tucson Computer Society - January 21, 2001 at 19:07:52:
Over the past decade, desktop publishing has been a rapid growth area of personal computers. Individuals and organizations have discovered that internal desktop publishing has offered significant advantages to their companies. The internal use of desktop publishing has permitted these organizations to produce documents faster, at lower cost, and perhaps more important, with significantly greater control of the final product, compared to outsourcing to a typesetting firm. PageMaker, following its introduction in 1984 by Paul Brainard, CEO of the Aldus Corporation, was the first desktop publishing program available for both the PC and Mac platforms.Adobe PageMaker has become the de facto standard for desktop publishing. Desktop publishing software, like Adobe PageMaker, offers many of the same features and functions of a word processor such as the ability to enter and edit text, spell-check and save your materials. In addition, this type of software allows you to easily format your publications, either manually or using templates, and develops specific fonts, type sizes, and styles for various portions of a publication. The easy addition of graphic design elements provides a polished and uniform look for the publication, whether it is an operator’s manual, catalog, brochure, or newsletter.
Photographs may also be placed anywhere on the page and the text can be made to flow around the photographs and other graphic elements. Items may be marked for inclusion in a Table of Contents and an Index and the program will keep track of the specific pages on which these items appear. Multilevel indexes may be automatically generated for each publication.
With the advent of low cost laser printers, it is now feasible to produce short run publications as these new generation laser printers are capable of 1200 dpi resolution, producing near typeset quality.
Installation—Although Windows Me was not mentioned as a supported operating system, I attempted to install Adobe PageMaker on my AMD 800 mHz system, following the directions in the package (As I normally do, I used EnditAll to close down the running programs before I attempted to install the program) I am pleased to report that the installation went smoothly, from start to finish, and the newly installed PageMaker program opened flawlessly.
Operation—Or How I Worked With PageMaker I have limited experience with desktop publishing, primarily having used Microsoft Publisher and Xerox Ventura Publisher (Purchased and re-engineered by Corel Corporation), so in addition to working through the tutorial, I enrolled in a course offered by Pima Community College to shorten my learning curve. During use, I found that if I attempted to perform a particular operation incorrectly or out of the proper sequence, I received an error message which was in meaningful, plain English, allowing me to easily correct my mistake. The online help files have been very useful for on-the-fly lookups of various features.
I have completed the introductory course at PCC and have only begun to use the many features of PageMaker. I should note that Adobe has lowered the MSRP for PageMaker by several hundred dollars, increasing the value of the purchase. The current price for Version 6.52 found on the internet is as high as $574.00, and as little as $454.00 plus shipping and handling.
Conclusion—I found the program robust, easy to install, and was pleased to find that Adobe included Adobe PhotoShop LE, Adobe Acrobat Reader and Distiller, many pre-designed templates, more fonts than anyone would initially utilize, and a large amount of clipart and photographs to enhance your publications. I have used Adobe PageMaker during the entire course, but I have never had the program crash Much of the interface was intuitive, but some of the short-cuts seem less than obvious to me. For example, to insert typographers quote marks, you use Alt+Shft+[ and Alt+Shft+]. However, these shortcuts, along with many others became second nature very quickly and I adopted the short-cuts for many of my tasks, rather than using the drop-down menus. I’ll be using this program in the near future to publish the TCS Journal (with the help and advice of Jorga Riggenbach and Ken Blake).
System Requirements—Adobe PageMaker 6.5 Plus requires the following minimum software and hardware: an Intel Pentium Processor (I’m running this program on an AMD Athlon processor), Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows NT 4.0 or later (I’m running this on Windows Me) VGA Video display card, CD-ROM drive (to load the program), 16 MB or more of RAM for Windows 95 or Windows 98 (plus default virtual memory settings), 32 MB RAM for Windows NT 4.0 (plus default virtual memory settings), 86 MB of free had disk space for minimum installation. Recommended System Requirements: an Intel Pentium 100 or greater processor, high-resolution (24 bit or greater Super-VGA) video display card, 36 MB or more of RAM, 127 MB of free hard-disk space for full installation, a PostScript printer.
What Comes in the Box—The Adobe PageMaker 6.5 Plus program on CD, the Adobe PageMaker 6.5 Plus art on CD, Adobe PageMaker 6.5 User Guide, Adobe PageMaker 6.5 Plus Getting Started Guide, Adobe PageMaker 6.5 Quick Reference Card, Product Registration Card.
What’s on the CDs—The first CD contains the Adobe PageMaker 6.5 Plus program, comprehensive online help files (including the PageMaker Script Language Guide), the Adobe Table 3.0 program, the Kodak Digital Science color management system, various plug-in modules, filters, templates, scripts, utilities, and PageMaker tutorial files. Also included on this CD are more than 140 Type 1 fonts from the Adobe Type Library, as well as 5,000 clip-art images and stock photographs.
To get you started, Adobe provides you with 300 templates for both business and personal document preparation such as business cards, posters, and presentation folders, to name a few of the many types that are included. For ease in transferring documents to and from others, both Adobe Acrobat Reader and Adobe Acrobat Distiller software are included.
Adobe also provides a PostScript (AdobePS) printer driver for use with PostScript printers. Of course, for handling the included stock photographs and those which you will no doubt add, Adobe includes Adobe Photoshop LE.
This edition of Adobe Photoshop should provide functionality well beyond the basics for dealing with your photographs.
![[------STRIPE-----]](../../../cgif/str1.gif){kind=small}
Site Disclaimer Suggestions? E-Mail to webmaster@noccc.org